Next-Generation Broadcast TV Standard in Works

It’s been less than two years since television broadcasting switched off the last analog transmitter and went all digital. But the actual digital broadcast standard — ATSC DTV — is actually a lot older than that. In fact, it’s 15 years old if you start counting from when the Federal Communications Commission adopted it, 16 if you start counting from when the consortium of technology companies — the so-called Grand Alliance — put the system together and a few years older still if you go back to when the various components of the system were actually invented. That’s a long, long time ago given the lighting speed with which electronic media evolves these days. And that’s why far-sighted broadcasters and technologists, under the aegis of the Advanced Television Systems Committee, have begun work on the next-generation TV broadcasting standard.

Even as some viewers still fiddle with DTV converter boxes, next-gen proponents say a new system is needed within the next several years so that TV stations can broadcast more programming, more reliably to more places and explore new business opportunities. The standards-setting work is still in its early stages, but already there seems to be a consensus that the third iteration of broadcasting — the first was 1941-vintage NTSC — should be far more efficient in its use of spectrum than today’s DTV system. Proponents talk of achieving it in a couple of different ways.

First, the standard would feature improved compression of video, audio and other content. “Broadcasters could use far fewer bits to deliver the same program at the same quality or deliver higher quality using the same bits we use today,” PBS’s Kutzner says. And, second, it would allow stations to pump more bits through any given bandwidth. How many more Kutzner couldn't say, but certainly, he says, “a substantial improvement” over the 19.4 mbps in 6 MHz now possible with DTV. “There are new techniques that approach Shannon’s Law, the theoretical limit of the ability to push bits through a channel,” he says.